Double-Speak and Lies

Part 1 – Steal from the Rich and Give to the Poor
(WARNING: Political “Rants” ahead!)

DOUBLE-SPEAK
Language used to deceive, usually through concealment or misrepresentation of truth.
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

LIE
Intransitive verb:
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression
Noun:
1a: An assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive
1b: An untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker
2: Something that misleads or deceives
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/

By nature man is a political being. One of the things that set us apart from the beasts is our ability to speak in ideas, to rally others to our causes, and to consider the future beyond the next meal. In fact, our reasoning ability, our memory of history, and our ability to plan for the future sets us apart from all other species.

One of the other things that set us apart from the beasts is our ability to deceive. So today’s rant is about this ability. Specifically, our ability to use (misuse) language to cover our agenda and hide the truth from those we wish to rally to our causes, who might not otherwise support the true nature of our goal if it was stated baldly and plainly. Since I am conservative in nature, I am going to rant about those abuses of language by the Left, which they use to advance their Socialist agenda.

Below, and in the next few entries to come, are several examples of double-speak and lies that are espoused by the Left to further advance their causes, which are either intentional distortions of the truth; or outright lies. If this kind of thing offends you, go make some Pizza instead. There is a recipe in the archives.

So here goes…

“The rich aren’t paying their “fair share” of income taxes.” (Both double-speak and lie)

So, here is a perfect example of the type of class warfare used to try and rally the working men and women of America to vote for someone whose agenda is not in their best interests. A couple of facts for you to consider: “The Rich” is an ambiguous term that means whatever the speaker wants it to mean, depending on what public policy weapon he or she intends to use against them. By leaving the term ambiguous, the speaker can leave it to his/her audience to define it for themselves – and the definition never includes the audience (nobody thinks of themselves as Rich, even John Kerry). Promising tax cuts for the “Middle Class” without defining who is “middle class” and who is “rich” leaves all who fall for it open to subjugation by an ever-expanding political class and their enabling bureaucrats. This is a Marxist tactical maneuver designed to hide the true agenda. (For expansion on this, PLEASE read The Communist Manifesto.)

For my purposes here I will consider two types of “Rich”
Type One is the person who through good fortune, previous hard work, previous entrepreneurial success, or lucky parentage, is living on the interest and dividend income of their investments or trust funds. This is the type of person most often castigated as not paying their “Fair Share” of (income) taxes owing to the fact that they have no wage income. These people pay capital gains taxes on the sale of their investments and regular income tax on that portion of their savings that generates interest. These people should more accurately be called “Wealthy” since their means derives from the growth of their wealth almost exclusively. When speaking about tax policy, these people are used as the stalking horse (look it up) so that punishments (extra tax burden) can be perpetrated on the next group of “Rich” – the High Wage Earner.

Type Two-the High Wage Earner-is the person who, through either hard work, business success, entrepreneurial success, or good fortune, is working on a daily basis as a producing member of society but whose income is substantially above the median. These are the people whose income is targeted by the moochers in Washington DC, and who are represented to the average blue-collar Joe as not worthy of consideration while their income is being confiscated. The High Wage Earner is also the person whom everyone in America should aspire to be some day, because they are SUCCESSFUL.

A couple of facts: As of 2006, wage earners making more than $200,000 annually paid more than 53% of all Federal Income taxes collected (34% of total receipts including income and payroll taxes). Wage earners making more than $100,000 per year paid more than 80% of the Federal Income taxes collected (63% of total receipts including payroll taxes). Wage Earners making more than $50,000 per year paid almost 90% of the TOTAL wage and income taxes collected! (1)

I am not sure what your definition of “Middle Class” is, but I am sure it probably includes at least the lower end of the groups referenced above. If your definition of “Middle Class” is everybody making LESS THAN $50,000 per year, well I’ve got news for you. This group pays almost NO FEDERAL INCOME TAXES. Most of what they pay is Payroll Taxes (OASDI, FICA, Medicare, RRRA, Etc.). This group’s total tax liability was less than 12% of the total federal income and payroll tax receipts collected, almost all of this from the $30,000-$50,000 per year group

Tax Statistics By Group (2):
Top 1% (income >$364,656) paid 39.38% of all income tax collected in 2005.
Top 5% (income >$145,282) paid 59.67% of all income tax collected in 2005.
Top 10% (income >$103,911), paid 70.30% of all income tax collected in 2005.
Top 25% (income >$62,068) paid 85.99% of all income tax collected in 2005.
Here is the double-speak punch line: The second 25% (income > $30,880 but <$62,068, basically what everybody considers the “middle class”) paid only 10% of all income taxes collected in tax year 2005. This group represents one fourth of all tax filers (33,152,910 total returns) in America. To lower taxes on this group, you must shift the tax burden still higher to the more productive members of society, or flatten the tax burden so that the lower 50% of all taxpayers increase their share of the taxes paid. The fact is that 66,305,818 (the bottom 50% of all tax returns filed) had either a small amount of taxes paid, or had money “refunded” to them through EITC that they never paid in the first place. The Bottom 50% of all tax filers pay only 4% of the Federal tax burden.

Conclusion: The “Rich” (High Wage Earners) pay MORE than their “fair share” of taxes.

Opinion – If you continue to marginalize successful people, your economy-which depends on them-will eventually collapse. See France or pre-Thatcher Great Britain as examples of progressive socialism in action. They are great examples of the devastating effects of confiscatory taxation and Liberal social programs which stifle productivity and keep unemployment high.

“Increasing the Federal Minimum Wage helps workers” (Lie)

The Federal Minimum Wage was enacted in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Prior to this in 1933, a minimum wage requirement was a part of the National Industrial Recovery Act, believed by some to have halted the employment recovery then in progress and prolonging the Depression.

Recent data (3) suggests that the seasonal unemployment increases nationwide are primarily in the 16-24 age group, a group composed of high school and college students working seasonal jobs. The most recent jump to 6.1% unemployment comes directly after the July 24, 2008 increase in the Federal Minimum Wage. (Side note: This analysis excludes recent significant non-seasonal job losses in Michigan attributed to the Auto Industry contraction and increases in tax levies on businesses.)

Increasing the minimum wage harms those workers most that it was designed to help. To quote a 1992 study from the National Center for Policy Analysis (4):

“Only 3.7 percent of hourly wage earners are paid the minimum wage and most of those are not poor.
A majority of minimum wage workers are either young persons living in non-poor families or a second or third earner in a household - not the primary breadwinner.
In 1992, only 198,500 of the nation's 4.7 million minimum wage earners were adult householders.
Only 1.2 percent of all minimum wage workers (about 58,600) were adult heads of households with less than $10,000 of income.
Supporters of a higher minimum wage also frequently imply that a large portion of minimum wage workers are single mothers for whom welfare is an alternative to work. However, this belief is also disproved by the facts.
Single parents, male and female, make up only 6.5 percent of the minimum wage workforce.
Only about half of them (155,900) of a total 311,600) work full time. The number of poor people earning the minimum wage is small in part because most poor people of working age are not working.
Only 9.2 percent of poor people of working age have full-time jobs.
About 60 percent do not work at all.
Thus the minimum wage increase proposed by President Clinton would do little to reduce poverty. Instead, it would cause real hardship for some low-income Americans, the very people it is designed to help. A large majority of scholarly studies demonstrate that increasing the federal minimum wage causes higher unemployment. Those who suffer are most likely to be teenagers, racial minorities and low-skilled workers.
Teenage unemployment rose sharply when the minimum wage was increased from $3.35 to $4.25 in 1990 and 1991.
Furthermore, the extent to which teenage unemployment exceeds that of the whole population tends to increase in direct proportion to increases in the minimum wage.
All the evidence shows that the job-killing impact of the minimum wage is worse for blacks than for whites.
Prior to the imposition of the minimum wage, the unemployment rates for blacks and whites were very similar.
Today, however, the unemployment rate for nonwhites is about twice the rate for whites, and changes in the unemployment rate for nonwhites closely parallels changes in the real minimum wage.
For example, the 1990 and 1991 increases in the minimum wage were accompanied by rising nonwhite unemployment, which reached a peak of 13.1 percent in June 1992.
The minimum wage reduces on-the-job training opportunities that allow low-skilled, low-income workers to rise up the job ladder out of poverty.
An increase in the minimum wage would also shock the labor market and might trigger a recession, especially since this is a time of economic uncertainty. In the past, increases in the minimum wage have triggered recessions or prolonged depressions. For example:
Evidence demonstrates a link between minimum wage increases and the recessions of 1990-91 and 1974-75.
A good case also could be made that both the 1979-80 economic downturn and the recession that began in late 1981 were exacerbated by minimum wage increases, but this link is less obvious because inflation and other factors were involved
A minimum wage requirement mandated by the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 halted an increase in employment, lengthening and deepening the Great Depression.”

Conclusion: The biggest beneficiaries of a Minimum Wage hike are the politicians who propose it. They get to appear to care about working people while knowingly putting them out of jobs. Business which are forced to comply with this hike react in rational ways, by either raising prices to cover their new expense basis, or by laying off marginal or entry-level workers in order to stay afloat. This has an extra benefit to the politicians, namely that they get to vilify the businesses and/or the President for "causing the unemployment". Give me a break!

Beware the politicians who promise you something that they cannot deliver. If a politician is looting one faction of the population in order to give you ill-gotten gain, run! YOU will be the next victim when those before you are used up, and those behind you will benefit from YOUR destruction.

Pax,

Newbius

1 Tax Data source is the US House Joint Committee on Taxation publication dated March 14, 2007: http://www.jct.gov/x-11-07.pdf, Page 7, Table 4;
2 Group Taxation statistics from the IRS, http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/06in01etr.xls
3 Labor statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
4 Quotes regarding the Minimum Wage are from the National Center for Policy Analysis, http://www.ncpa.org/studies/s190/s190.html